Our attempt to provide useful adventure hooks for the Velvet Horison Monter manual continues;
Previous entries here;
Today, the Wound Whisp!
Background
- created by magical healing
- there is a place full of timeless living wounds
- without healing or rest they go mad
- cant be hurt with harmful things
- grows with blows
- knows where its mother and father are (dealer and sufferer)
- so it will search for those first and only start hunting others if it can't find them
- death and decomposition and healing the same to it
- You bear the wound but you may also learn what wisdom that wound knows
- can rest in rocks and trees - possibly useful
- almost impossible to keep out - since it can inhabit any solid object
- IT STAYS AWAKE AND ALIVE IN YOUR FLEEEEESH
- but its friendly towards its bearer - can even become a useful scar
Hooks;
1. Someone threatens to open a gateway to the Wound Dimension and to release a blizzard of wounds into the earth. Are they super-evil or just trying to release what are essentially sentient creatures from endless captivity?
2. A wound haunts the forests, drifting through trees, inhabiting rocks and sometimes trying to nest in small animals, which it invariably kills. Getting rid of it involves either banishing it with healing magic, accepting it into your own body, or unweaving the mystery of its creation, probably involving speaking to it and finding out who made and who suffered it.
3. Someone is using deluded or manipulated wounds as assassins, sending them burrowing after their target and leaping upon them as-one, they die quickly of a dozen different wounds, none of which were ever theirs. Finding the wound weaver will be a challenge, defeating them worse and then what to do with the wounds?
4. A group or cult of people have willingly accepted minor wounds over a long period of time - either for personal advantage or due to religious/philosophical reasons - they are now heavily scarred but these scars are 'allies' which will pulse when danger threatens, given them a kind of spider-sense.
5. Someone afflicted with a 'speaking wound' desperately wants to get rid of it but the only way to do that is to let the wound lead them to its mother or father, and then transfer the wound. Neither of those two people are going to be thrilled to see it.
6. A mighty hero pursued by a flock of wounds, some of which he caused and some he suffered, now racing forever to escape them lest they settle into his skin and kill him
The Merchant of Wounds
Hooded and ragged, perhaps able to bilocate, perhaps one of many, appearing in midnight markets or hidden alcoves for a day or two. Seekers are lead to their parlour by crooked passages. A sinister figure who has shelf-lined rooms or rickety wagons filled with jars containing living wounds.
A weapon wound. This wound too stupid or desperate to try anything other than leaping into the nearest body (so the merchant claims). Hurl it at your foe like a grenade.
A friendly wound. The merchant claims this wound is very small and only looking for a place to rest. If you accept it, it will prove a useful ally, a scar, for instance, in your back, can warn you of hidden dangers. "Or perhaps you are a penitent?"
A trained Utility Wound. the merchant claims this wound will serve like a hunting animal, of a sort, and can be used to crack open doors, walls, stones, and to break other things. "You must keep very careful control of course.... very careful.."
A particular wound. One suffered or caused by, particular people or in particular circumstances. These go up in price relative to the particularity of the request, and can take several days to "acquire", but their uses are manifold;
- A 'seeker' which can lead you to its 'mother' or 'father'.
- A 'wise wound' which can tell you of a particular fight, or the place it was made, or the people who made it.
(Only wounds healed by magic can be found….)
Books on Healing. The Merchant (merchants?) of Wounds are very keen on expanding the knowledge of magical healing. They collect, reproduce and disperse texts on the matter, keep a track of who knows the techniques and will receive and sell on any ‘healing artefacts’ for a very reasonable price. “After all, its good for business.”
Wound Views
There is essentially a kind of moral politics over the use of magical healing to treat wounds, though it takes place almost entirely through the letters and journals of those concerned with the strange and abstruse.
Heling those on the brink of death where no other cure will do is surely a good thing?
But the creation of living wounds in a distant dimension is surely both evil and, ultimately, very dangerous?
Are these living wounds the result only of Thaumaturgy or does divine magical also produce them? If so, which gods do or do not produce them? Lots of room for argument on this one.
Should we entirely stop healing wounds with magic, and if so, how might this be enforced? How far are would-be enforcers willing to go?
Huh, forgot I did this; False Machine; Scars
No comments:
Post a Comment